“Splash some lake water on your face.”
“Gross,” she moaned.
Some dad. Chicago professional. Healthy good-looking male. Loving, loyal, bringing home enough money to pay the mortgage and take family beach trips, nabbing a fancy address in a high-profile suburb. Now? A first-rate loser living off his deceased wife’s sister, confused and angry at the world, and broiled alive in a dead lake in the Kentucky mountains trying to show his kids a good time. Brant suddenly stood up, shouting, swinging an oar in great arcs.
“A bee, a bee!” He lost his footing, crashed into the floor of the boat, and smacked his head on the metal bench with a deep underwater, gong sound. He came up shrieking, blood flowing from both nostrils, spilling down the front of his shirt. I hopped to my feet, got right in his face and unloaded on him. “Brant you God damned fool!” My voice boomed twice as loud all over the water. Still screaming in his face. “What in the holy fuck is wrong with you?” Lilly exploded into tears. Brant flopped around in shock
“I hate this!” Lilly shouted and tossed her rod and reel into the open water.
“No!” I leaped forward with hands grasping, but too late. The fishing gear sunk fast in the dark waters beneath the green algae skin, and vanished at once. Brant was up, face full of blood, howling, kicking, and wind-milling his fists at me. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
I blocked his blows until he twisted sideways, grabbed his fishing pole and hurled it into the water. I reached forward and hugged him hard, my eyes filling with tears. Lilly fell in. We were bloody. Beat up. And wailing arm in arm. The funeral. A boat tossed in a stormy sea. The funeral. Had I seen this coming? Emily, how could you do this to us? In that moment I wished the lake would spin, like a huge, hydraulic vortex. A flushed commode that would swallow all this pain and all this misery. Maybe it would afford us one last chance to find Emily. I held the kids in my arms. Tightly. Something needed to be done. I just didn’t know what.
“Guys, let’s get the hell out of here.” I stripped off my t-shirt, wadded it up and put it against Brant’s face to mop the blood flow. I plopped the lidless cooler down between them and they dug for the few pieces of ice sitting on the bottom and ate it. I yanked the starter cord and the tiny gas engine coughed alive. A twist of the throttle and we cut back toward the dock. For the first time since Emily died, I actually started to feel anger toward her. And myself. What kind of man specializes in a profession recovering stolen life insurance money worth millions but is too stupid to purchase his own policy for his wife? What had I been thinking? I just assumed Emily had a brain. I never considered the idea she could be so incapable of paying attention, stepping into the path of a speeding truck.
According to police there had been upwards of thirty people on that corner waiting to cross the street too. How many of them stepped off? Not one. That’s how many. Not one. What of me? What had I become? The detective hero blown to smithereens, his ghost levitating over his own torn flesh, gathering the pieces, trying to sew it all back together…making a monster. So if I couldn’t get my shit together for me, who could I do it for? It was no longer about me. Screw me.
In the car on the way back to town, chewing nicotine gum to still my nerves, I glanced into the rearview mirror. “Guys,” I sighed. “We never have to do that again. No more fishing. Ever. I want to make this right. No. I’m going to make this right. What would you like to do?”
We swung open the polished glass door to Ida’s Kitchen and the sugary scent of fresh waffle cones and air conditioning rolled over us. The place was done up in yellow vinyl cushioned, white-wire chairs and tables, everything else also painted bright white, the tile well-worn and scuffed indicating a lot of customer foot-traffic, a sure sign for good ice cream. Three cups of ice water, filled twice each, drinking where we stood, then we were ready to we order. My senses were sharpened at once and, with the gin bottle gone, I realized the gum had done the trick. I was so high off nicotine that I floated like a helium balloon over the counter and held on to it with my hands so I wouldn’t drift off. Brant and Lilly ordered ice cream cones and took a seat licking away at mountains of rainbow sherbert while I settled at the register with a woman with a slight over bite, hot red lipstick, fake eyelashes and hair dyed shoe polish black. She was 70 trying to be 40. I handed her a Visa. She tried it. Once. Then twice. “Sorry sir, this card is being declined.”
I coughed nervously looking at a handful of other patrons looking at me. “No problem,” I smiled, handing her my old debit card from my Chicago bank.
“What’s that?” She said, the words getting caught in the overbite.
“A debit card.”
“Well, we don’t take that neither.”
“Excuse me?”
“If it don’t got a credit card company name on it, we can’t take it,” she said it in a gentle tone avoiding my eyes, looking out the window, feeling bad for me. If anyone was inconveniencing her today, it wasn’t me. But the money. My chest tightened.
“Okay then,” I said digging in my wallet, bringing out my emergency five-dollar bill.
“It’s six dollars and thirty-six cents,” she said taking a moist cloth and wiping the counter down, as if anything else was going on except for a man who couldn’t pay for his kid’s ice cream.
“This debit card is from one of the best-known banks in Chicago,” I protested in a feeble whisper. Her arms fell to her side with total confusion.
“Where in Chicago?” This was going nowhere quick. I raised my up my palm,
“Look I’ll be right back.” I slipped out without the kids noticing. Outside, I dug in the center console of the Taurus. I finger-swiped the ashtray, got behind the seats, ad turned up the floormats. My face went hot, the shame too heavy in my chest and sinking into my gut. Scraping here and there, I turned up a fist full of dimes and nickels until they felt heavy enough to cover the balance. Some Chicago hero-detective I turned out to be, a fearless reputation in the mean streets of Southside, taking out homicidal maniacs, thieves and con-artists left and right, and now brought to my knees in poverty unable to pay dim mountain people for ice-cream. I went a little unhinged, fist-punched the rear seat cushion hard a half-dozen times. What in the hell was wrong with me? What was happening here? Then I just went uncorked. I sobbed and tears flowed. I grabbed the wadded-up, bloody t-shirt from the floorboard Brant had used and screamed into it until my throat went raw. Until I stopped. When the truth set in: We were living off my sister-in-law and she resented us for it. Perhaps she thought Emily and I had saved money up. Maybe she expected the day I moved here I would go online and search for jobs and apartments. That I would start reimbursing her as soon as I crossed into the front door. So much had been unspoken. But now, staring at sticky coins in my palm, I understood. I’d only been thinking of escaping Chicago. But now, we were broke. The kids and I couldn’t make a new start here…until I made a new start here. Problem was, I had to start. Nothing good would happen in Story Mount until I earned some money. Being sober alone wouldn’t do it. A geographical cure alone wouldn’t do it. How shortsighted I’d been.
I got out, circled into the driver door, flipped down the sun visor and saw a beat-up man with glowing bloodshot eyes, a sunburnt face, and a runny nose. Decimated. An emotional wreck. Still clenching the coins, I blew my nose into the t-shirt and popped on a pair of sunglasses. When I returned to pay off the tab, I counted the coins out one by one, trying not to sniffle, my voice going hoarse in intervals. The cashier didn’t speak, but watched me with her queer overbite as she hovered near the sink, well away from where I stood. I noticed she looked slightly scared. The last seven cents were a nickel and two pennies congealed together with old bubble gum and matted with a single hair.
“This is seven cents but it’s stuck together, is that okay?”
“Yes sir, it ain’t no big deal.” She spoke into the milk-shake machine. “If I’d known you was in a lurch,
I’d just given from the tip jar.” She turned, gave me an overbite-grin, fake lashes fluttering.
“No Ma’am.” My voice jumped a bit. “No hand-outs needed here.”
I turned to Brant and Lilly, head-nodding them to the door. Outside on a bench facing Exodus Avenue, Brant finished his cone and Lilly reached over and blotted sherbet on my nose, then acted if nothing had happened. I laughed. She was like that. They were each so brilliant. This was all about them. These two. Nothing else mattered. The thought suddenly hit me hard: My wife wasn’t coming back. The clarity of the moment shook me. I needed to provide for my beautiful children. That included making an income. And by trade, I was a detective.
So I made the decision right there.
11
Designed for this sh…
I’d never hugged Vanessa without her hugging me back. But for the first time in twenty years that’s exactly what happened. And it felt wrong. Like hugging something that shouldn’t be hugged. Something dead. I thought of Emily and the floor tilted beneath me. See, when I returned to the house to drop off the kids, I strolled into the kitchen and smiled at my sister-in-law, slid the chrome-handled fishing net off my shoulder and placed it on the terracotta floor alongside the tackle box full of fishing lures.
“Hey gal,” I murmured, voice dulled by the heavy emotional rollercoaster of the day. For two decades, our greeting ritual consisted of a deep but somewhat abbreviated hug. Yet this time, when I drew her near, something was off. Way off. Vanessa hesitated at first her body turning boneless, as if I’d embraced a person in a coma. The anticipation of the bounce of affection between us, the shared heartbeat, it all fell flat and lifeless. Since in my mind Vanessa was always perfect, despite her little nasty “Do Not Touch” notes taped all over the house, I automatically assumed something was wrong with me. Her lack of affection left me feeling at once shameful and even a tinge creepy: Shade: The emotionally starved, pathetic, trespasser-alcoholic. The man the deceased wife’s sister is even reluctant to touch. Great. I took a step back, and that’s when I noticed a butter-knife in her hand.
Vanessa leaned against the counter, arms folded over her chest, grasping a blade with a dollop of mayonnaise on the tip, heavy springs of auburn ringlets falling about her face and shoulders, a twinkling heart-shaped sapphire suspended from her neck by a single black leather lace, dangling dragonfly earrings fluttering about her delicate neckline. Sometimes they looked identical. Like Emily had possessed her near-twin sister, taken over her body, stolen her physicality and literally stood before me in the kitchen, my heart sinking. Vanessa just stood there, hip against cabinet, looking withdrawn. She spoke indifferently.
“How’d the fishing trip go?” she licked the mayo off the knife, turning away, not seeming to care if I answered the question, or left the room. I scraped a chair across the floor to the dining table and sat.
“It came,” I bobbed my head. “And went.” I was still trying to measure her mysteriously cold response, and wondered if she was going to have “the talk” with me.
“Shade,” she said holding up the glinting silver blade and forcing a smile. She began to speak but then inhaled, pausing with the nostrils flaring a little, a shadow crossing her eyes. Her ribcage rose, she exhaled, her shoulders loosening, the limbs going all relaxed, all an apparent attempt to soften the blow, to explain all the nasty little notes, and to lay down her expectations. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, refocused and shook the knife toward a jar resting by the toaster. “We have a problem.”
I cleared my throat. “Vanessa, we’ve always had a very personal and cordial relationship. Talk to me about anything. Please.”
“Okay,” She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows like here it goes. “Did Lilly or Brant use the mayonnaise earlier and leave it out all morning here on the counter? Without putting it back?” What the hell?
“The mayo?” I said closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose, thinking, this can’t be it. I waffled for a moment guessing how to engage her, or where this might be going, but didn’t have the faintest clue. Frankly, I didn’t really care. I was fried.
“I just feel like all I do is run around the house, picking up after everyone.” She paused. “Especially Lilly and Brant,” she said as she slowly screwed the lid back on the mayo jar. It dawned on my she’d intentionally left the jar out all day long to really drive home the point. “When my realtor classes start in the autumn, which is right around the corner by the way, I’m not going to have the time to meet this head-on-collision by myself.”
“Head-on-what?”
“Oh, come on Shade,” she slid the mayo jar across the counter where it almost fell into the sink. “The chaos this house has become, all the kids running around, you hanging out and all.”
My detective sleuth kicking in, I began to connect the dots, drawing a line from one infraction to the next, tracing it back to a week ago, where it started with complaints of toothpaste spit glued around the drain in the sink, followed by Lilly’s hair tangled in Vanessa’s favorite brush and finally Brant dinged for disregarding the clothes hamper, opting instead to toss his dirty underwear down on the floor right where her son Chase throws his. A few days later, the rise of the “Do Not Touch” Post-It Notes broke out all over the house like a rash. “Hey Vanessa,” I said patting the empty chair beside me. “Come sit down for a second. Just talk to me.”
But she didn’t. Instead she walked to the mayo, flopped it into the fridge and walked back up to me, arms crossed, not like she was pissed, but to protect her from her own emotions. “All I’m saying is…”
I cut her off. “Look Van,” I tilted my head to form the thought. “I don’t use mayonnaise. And honestly? Lilly and Brant hate the stuff. Luke was making his lunch here this morning. Sandwiches?”
She glanced at the sink, spotted the loaf of bread, the crumbs, the twist-tie sitting by itself on the countertop nearby, an empty discarded tuna fish can where apparently Luke had indeed made his own lunch that morning. Her face reddened and she bit her bottom lip before looking up. “Look Shade, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, I’m just trying to keep the ship organized. I like it to be tied down tightly. And it’s my ship.”
“Vanessa,” I said gesturing toward the chair beside again. “Come talk to me for God’s sake. What on earth is going on here? Look, I think I already know what it is and I’m ready to talk. Okay?”
She pushed off the counter, meandered over, and took a seat. But not the one beside me. She drew up to the edge of the table, flopped forward and supported her chin on crossed forearms. She turned her head, gazing at me, eyes searching mine left to right, studying me with some hidden urgency or subtle intensity, like we were playing a game but only she knew the rules. Me, the seasoned private investigator- without the vaguest notion what in the hell was wrong with this woman. Drop me in a well and seal me in total darkness. She was torn between self-loathing or self-pity or self-something. I was literally unable to see my own hand waving in the darkness before me. “look, like I said, I think I know what this is about. And I’m cool with it. I’m ready to talk.”
My words having some kind of effect, Vanessa sat up in her chair, leaned uneasily against the back and stared blankly above my head, somewhere at the wall behind me. A sudden teardrop materialized on her cheek, but with a quiet reflex she swiped it away. I tried again. “What’s wrong, Van? You’re freaking me out. Look, let me go first, okay?”
“No,” she put her elbow on the table and rested her forehead on the heel of her palm. “It’s just not that easy Shade.”
“You’ve always been able to talk with me,” I said brushing her hand and offering a light grin. “Give me anything. We can start anywhere. I mean, we can jot it down on a piece of paper with a ‘check the yes or no box’, anything.” She gave a brief smile but focused on the center of the table’s surface where no object stood. A ribbon of hair fell over h
er ear, freeing the silver dragonfly that dangled from her earlobe.
“Look Shade,” she gave a long sigh. “I don’t know how to put this.” Another teardrop traced the contour of her cheek. “Having you guys here has been a joy. There’s no other way to describe it.”
“Okay,” I nodded, giving a light smile. That’s a good start.
“Shade,” she shifted over into the vacant chair beside me, drawing close, suddenly cupping her hands over mine, “Look. Even now the way you are supporting me. Talking to me. Encouraging me. This is all on me. Just hang this one on me. Okay? I just can’t do it anymore.”
What the fuck are you talking about? I leaned in. “Do what anymore Van?”
“This,” she spread her hands out in a wide arc, across the table, like wings opening in the space surrounding her, and jerked her open palms for emphasis. “I can’t do- this anymore.”
My heart ticked up a beat and my mind began to race. Oh no. This wasn’t about me. Or the kids. This is something bigger. Much bigger. Now I went all investigator and began to grasp at straws. I wondered if Luke had cancer. Maybe they were about to lose the house. But why? Drugs? A gambling addiction. There was an Indian Casino not too far away, just a county over. We both jumped. The roar. All the kids clamored down the steps like a pack of wild dogs, ran by the archway and spilled out the back door. After the blur of the last kid’s sneaker vanished down the porch steps, I let it out. “Okay this sounds serious. I need you to start talking. I want to help, but I can’t until you start talking.”
“Shade,” she paused to choose the words. “I had this expectation. That you would move to Story Mount, live here with us for a year or so, to get your feet back under you and that it would be…”
This was about me again? What? Wait. I was caught in the confusion again. “Would be what?”
Skin the Cat Page 11